Conventional quick cooking pastas are produced by preparing pastas either in precooked, high moisture form (containing 55-70% moisture) or in dehydrated form (containing 5-12% moisture) with a thin or expanded structure for quicker rehydration in boiling water. The precooked, high moisture pasta has a poor shelf-life stability which is usually overcome by acidification and in-package pasteurisation, while the dehydrated pasta has unsatisfactory textural quality.
Regular semi-moist pasta has a moisture content of about 15-45% and it has the advantage over dehydrated pasta that it requires only about half the cooking time even though the difference in moisture content is not great. The longer cooking time of the dehydrated pasta is because of the hardening of the pasta surface of the dehydrated pasta during the drying step. In addition, semi-moist pasta has the advantage over high moisture pasta in that it is easier to preserve. Because of these two advantages, semi-moist pasta can be a convenient quick cooking product provided it has an extended shelf life.
The addition of salt and other humectants to the dough mix to preserve semi-moist pasta products has been described in the prior art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,529,609 describes a method of preserving a semi-moist pasta by dispersing a finely divided salt throughout a dough, partially gelatinizing the salt-containing dough, then drying the gelatinized dough to a moisture content of at least 15% and a maximum water activity of 0.85. U.S. Pat. No. 5,573,796 describes a method of producing a fresh pasta product (30-32% moisture) with an extended shelf life by incorporating up to 4% salt in the dough. Although adding salt to the dough is effective in preserving the pasta, it has the disadvantages of imparting a salty taste, and impairing the pasta texture.
The coating of salt and other humectants on the dough surface has been described, for example, in EP-A-0626137 which describes a method of preserving a shelf-stable, uncooked or partially cooked, acidified, moist pasta (15-38% moisture, pH below 4.6) by subjecting fresh pasta to steam treatment followed by immersing it in an acidulant and/or a humectant such as sodium chloride, propylene glycol or glycerol or mixtures thereof, partially drying the pasta, sealing the pasta in a container and pasteurising. JP-A-5123122 describes a method of producing steamed or boiled noodles of controlled acidity by soaking boiled or steamed noodles in aqueous solution containing organic acid, common salt and milk serum. The surface coating of acid on pasta gives the advantages of producing a pasta with a less salty taste (salt is rinsed away during the water heating step for consumption) and a better texture than the pasta made from dough to which salt has been added. However, the disadvantages are the production of an acidified pasta and the difficulty of drying spaghetti, linguine type longitudinal type products to a low moisture content of about 15% while maintaining an individual strand pasta shape without the strands tangling and sticking together after the pasta has been dipped in acid, salt, or other humectant solution and dried.
We have found that by coating the surface of the pasta with a solid humectant such as sodium chloride after the partial drying step, a reduced moisture pasta is produced with a better texture than a pasta not only where the humectant has been added to the dough but also where the humectant has been added to the pasta surface before partial drying. In addition, in-pack pasteurisation is unnecessary.